An interesting article, amidst the shrinking legal market, financial firms believe their business will increase by offering similar services to law firms: Look to law grads for recruits, June 24, 2010

IFAs should look to law graduates as a source of new recruits, according to Sifa. Speaking on board PIMS last week, Sifa development director David Seager said there are few jobs at present for law graduates and financial services firms should look at recruiting them into the IFA profession. Wait, you want to get businesses to hire law graduates who took upon themselves $100,000+ in non-dischargeable debt to fill positions of financial advisors?

He said: “There are a lot of people studying law but there are very few jobs. We always have this debate in financial services about where the new blood will come from. Firms should start looking at law graduates.” [emphasis mine] O.k., let’s clarify, yes many students study law, common law, theories, unrealistic hypotheticals which garner no practical legal skills. Unless that law graduate has an MBA or you’re willing to train them on finance, you may be making an investment in these law graduates with the same risk the law graduates made with attending law school. That one business law class will not help them “hit the ground running” at your company.

Seager said it is estimated that 3,000 out of 8,900 law firms in England and Wales will go out of business by 2012 due to the rise of transactional legal services offerings from big companies such as Tesco. Wow, I can only imagine the number of solo practicioners and mid-size firms that the economy will devour in the United States, especially with top firms laying off staff and associates.

He said the introduction of Tesco legal services will appeal to a number of consumers because they already have a client relationship with Tesco. He said that clients will be able to get the same transaction from Tesco for half the price offered by some law firms, so solicitors need to focus on building their client relationships to survive. I see, Tesco and other similar business firms would like to absorb the unemployed attorneys, increase their business production, increase their competition with law firms with the hopes of obliterating the legal industry. Makes sense.

Seager said that IFAs can help solicitor firms to do this by moving away from a purely transactional business model. He said: “There is going to be huge consolidation in the legal sector and IFAs should be looking to make the most of that. I wouldn’t say consolidation, moreso an industry takeover.

“IFAs are in a good position to partner up with solicitors and offer consultancy on how to change their business model so they retain more clients.” Seager said that solicitors have 20 per cent client retention on average.

People are either waiting for or trying to take advantage of the collapsing legal industry, but that’s the point—it is collapsing. Save yourself.

Please let me know how one company hiring four recent law graduates is a sign of good news when TENS of THOUSANDS of recent and older lawyers are unemployed, underemployed, not working in the legal field at all? How is this great news, the number of people hired you can count on one hand and still have room. This appears to be moreso a press release for Hewlett-Packard than an actual article. The piece discusses hiring the recent law graduates as in-house attorneys making nearly what they would as first year associates at BigLaw but actually gaining practical legal skills. “The new lawyers will learn substantive law, litigation skills and business acumen, HP leaders say. But most important, they’ll learn those things from the client’s point of view.”

O.k., it’s great that a company seized an opportunity to make attorneys work for the money while benefitting the corporation, but really how does hiring 4 graduates give hope to the masses of Sallie Mae indebted, near homeless, caught in the sweeping tide of one of the worst recessions in this country? “We saw an opportunity when the recession hit,” said Deputy General Counsel Gabriel Buigas, who helped develop the program. “We could actually go and recruit people on an equal footing with a law firm and we could probably do a better job internally in training them.”

“He likens HP’s training program to the apprenticeships recently created by big firms like Howrey, Orrick, Drinker Biddle & Reath and others.”

Press release for Hewlett-Packard and free advertisement for the three firms mentioned in my previous post concerning the apprenticeship model: https://lifesmockery.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/an-article-and-the-idea-of-law-practice-reform/]

Here’s the actual article: Law.com – HP Decides to Hire, Train Fresh Law School Graduates, June 21, 2010. Notice in both articles there’s doubt whether the apprenticeship model for newly minted lawyers will be the new trend among companies and firms. Thus, it will not, as now, benefit the majority of attorneys in the future.

Wow, in the last post I discussed the vendor company iBridge, now we have actual LAW FIRMS that just focus on document reviewe and e-discovery. Wait, you mean that it is not lucrative to practice law? Apparently not. Introducing: Ryley Carlock, a law firm which thrives on actual document review by its now knew facility. Wow, there’s that word again facility (factory). Here’s the article stint:

Ryley’s document review practice group helps clients manage electronic and physical documents related to lawsuits, evidence discovery and regulatory compliance . The new center will expand on the firms abilities in those areas.This firm is also implementing the business model whereby the contract attorneys will be working for these types of businesses eliminating the need for major law firms to hire through placement agencies. Temporary agencies are next on the chopping block in the big legal-business shift of the legal industry. For some reason, I shed no tear. For all the times decent attorneys were placed in surreal, mental hospital-like conditions with poor sanitary conditions, recruiters and managers who overlook or mishandle violations, improper (we’re talking extreme) near violent-like work conditions with the expection to produce a certain amount of work per day, I say let the games begin. Oh and yes, I forgot to mention the horrendous skimming off contractual attorneys hourly rate whereby they make the same or less than plumbers, mechanics, construction workers, etc. I respect those that do manual labor more, they see what their hands have wrought, they actually constructed something…o.k…I’m back.

Ryley attorney Matt Clarke said the Michigan legal documentation center will start out at 4,000 square feet and accommodate 30 to 40 attorneys. He said it could grow to 16,000 square feet.

Clarke and Ryley Managing Partner Rudy Parga said the Michigan location will help the firm service clients in the Northeast and Midwest. [emphasis mine]. So, out of the major legal markets in the United States: Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and West (California), this firm is providing services for two of the three markets. For people who continue to tell lawyers that the East Coast is the economic hub and you can always get a job there, I hope this has enlightened you.

“It give us more touches of our clients,” Parga said.

Parga said as much as half of Ryley’s legal document review work comes from other law firms representing clients in complex, paperwork-heavy cases and lawsuits. No need for new attorneys, “facilities” have it covered.